And that's assuming you have 0 hit on your gear. With normal raid debuffs (3%) and average ulduar gear, you're looking at around 150ish hit rating, which is another 5.7% . The chance for both taunts missing is 0,69% .

By that same logic then would it be OK for you to run slightly below the crit cap and have a 0.69% chance to be crit? I definitely think not.

It only takes one scenario where both taunts *do* miss to put a bad taste in the mouth of your raid.

That isn't even comparable to what vorda said. Taunts generally are not a cause for wipes but getting crit by something like Vezaxx generally can be. I can only think of 2 situations where a taunt resist could be fatal: Thorim when the other tank gets Unbalancing Striked and that Elder Whatshisname (top right in Freya's room) that roots/stuns. The latter isn't even a big deal if you assign healers probably but, yes, Thorim definitely is. It's probably a good idea not to risk a taunt resist on that boss so the glyph is nice. In other cases you could probably even swap a tank swap with HoP unless the other tank is also a Paladin.

So yeah: You want crit immunity on all bosses and the glyph only for Thorim.

Taunt failure on Algalon is a more or less guaranteed wipe.

Depends on when you taunt. If you start taunting after the fourth application, you have ~15 seconds to do a taunt that lands. Which is enough time to do both our taunts twice.

(though I'd agree, it just complicates stuff for your healer on a fight where they really don't want more complication)

Snipped for space, but I agree completely with every part of what Mex said about AD.

AD was originally intended (in TBC) to be a poor man's replacement for real tanking cooldowns. In 3.2 we'll be on par with other tanks as far as cooldown availability, so the original rationale for AD is gone. If they'd left the damage-reduction part of AD as it was (i.e., still leapfroggable), I would have thought it was on par with things like Critical Block and Will of the Necropolis -- handy features that can potentially save you, but with limitations that make them unreliable.

With the removal of leapfrogging though, it really does amount to an extra 15% effective health, and I don't see how that can help but cause some balance issues.

It's actually a ~43% increase to 35% of your health. This is because it doesn't allow you to take 30% more damage, but reduces the damage you take by 30%, meaning you take 70% of the damage you normally would for the last 35%. Now if we divide 35% by 70%, we end up at 50%, so 15% extra health.

Or to put it in actual health numbers, since that might be easier to follow. Let's say you have 40000 health, 35% of that is 14000. For that 14000 health, you take 70% of the damage you normally would, so if it were a health increase instead of the damage reduction, Ardent Defender would be turning this 14000 into 20000 health, as 14000 is 70% of 20000. If you then subtract 14000 from the 20000, you get 6000 which is 15% of 40000.

With regards to AD, the amount of what would be overkill on the blow that procs the heal, appears to be subtracted from the amount healed. If this is true, and assuming it doesn't double dip (the overkill is reduced by 30% twice, which I doubt) then it would mean that you would need to be hit in excess of 157% of your health to be one shotted (provided the proc is off CD). (.65 + .35/.7 + .3/.7 = 1.57857)

In terms of balance, compare it to a warrior's last stand. AD gives you 115% EH permanently and an extra 42% on one blow every 2 minutes. Last stand gives you an extra 30% EH for 12 seconds every 3 minutes. It's worth saying the the proc on AD works a little different that LS. Once the proc is used, the 42% EH is almost immediately lost (you should quickly be healed back to 100% HP, which leaves you on 115% EH), so you could say that paladins have an extra 42% EH while AD is off CD (ie you sit at 157% EH until a single blow causes the proc, then you drop back to 115% for 2 mins).

In my opinion, in terms of a cooldown, this still makes last stand superior in some situation and argent defender in others, so I wouldn't say they're heavily out balanced.

qixxin:

Judging by the the results posted by Maelstrom in this post, it looks like you can survive any amount of damage with AD. The spell seems to be broken into two parts:

1) Attack lands that would put you at <= 0 health, attack is completely absorbed by AD.
2) Heal procs for 30% of your health, minus the amount absorbed by AD in (1).

Edit: If someone can give me a good place to test this, I will try tonight. Is there a mob that can hit you for over 2x your base health that I can get to easily?


Does the latest version of the PTR still have the AD debuff turn off the damage reduction when it is up?

Now the patchwerk tests are on, I think you can reach him pretty easily? (if he has the same position as last PTR)

Nope. Current version of the PTR has the debuff only turning off the heal. Damage reduction stays the same.

How is everyone going to be gemming given the ratings changes?

I've always been lured by Shifting Purples since agility is affected by Kings, and adds armor and crit in addition to the small amount of dodge.

Given the way that epic gems make socket bonusses even more irrelevant (Generally. there are a few exceptions such as [Conqueror's Aegis Faceguard]), I'll probably just be gemming for stamina with 1 [Regal Dreadstone] (or [Shifting Dreadstone] depending on how the stat weightings work out) in my [Indestructible Plate Girdle] for meta gem activation.

10man FL is soloable to, though might take you awhile.

Sorry, this was what I meant when I mentioned classes not being able to parry having it used as a means of balancing them versus melee attackers (eg ele shamans can't parry, hunters can, that's taken into account when measuring survivability versus rogues, etc. The druid tanking example is much more prevalent, of course). Yes, it would hurt itemisation based on how the formulas work currently, but Blizzard hasn't let that stop them before (why isn't there AP and Str on plate gear? It would prevent the need for all these % Str talents and help smooth out scaling, etc). Two stats that do the exact same thing at the exact same (or mildly varying rates) isn't interesting, and doesn't represent a choice in gearing at all. There is some basic interaction, I suppose, between them since DR needs to be balanced, so picking the right one becomes about measuring the current DR on each stat, but it still seems clunky and ultimately unecessary. Perhaps a better option than merging them would be to differentiate them better.

Regarding AD and comparing it to Last Stand, then yes, there will be (very rare) situations where LS is superior. Plasma Blast comes to mind, where you're hit 6 times in a row at a speed and damage level far beyond anything else seen in the instance from regular melee swings. Comparing the two cooldowns, I'd say that they're relatively equal (LS versus AD's proc), however the passive EH boost from AD is what's being touted as broken here, and is what needs addressing.

As for easily accessible, hard-hitting mobs, the best option I think is probably Malygos. Form a raid group, make sure it's on heroic, and summon him in. He should be capable of hitting for 2x base health if you're unarmoured.

How about Judgement of the Just(Decreased Att speed) and Vindication(decreased att power), Do they stack on bosses in the PTR??

* Shield of Righteousness: Now deals 100% of shield block value as damage instead of 130%. In addition, the benefit from additional block value this ability gains is now subject to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns occur once block value exceeds 30 times the player's level and caps the maximum damage benefit from shield block value at 34.5 times the player's level.

I guess this was coming. The amount of SBV you can get come 3.2 would have resulted in absurd numbers on our shield slam. Also, I doubt it will affect our threat. If we manage threat with less than 2400 SBV (80*30 "cap") for our shield slams on live, we will do fine even if we are "capped" post 3.2.

That change was done largely for PvP reasons, since on the PTR people were doing 10k shield slams likely with trinkets + cooldowns. Is there even a gear set with 2400 static block value?

Cathela made an "all out" block value gear-set earlier in this thread. If I remember correctly he reached 2400 block value static on live and about 3500 block value static in 3.2. However, that gear-set is "gimp" in many ways and more realisticly your block value in a block-set will be lower.

However, that gear-set was based on current drops (and we have already seen that a few of the Prot T9 has block value). But I am sure reaching the "cap" of 2400 block value static will be doable for any Coliseum tanks.

First off, its probably worth noting that this change almost cerainly had nothing to do with prot pallies. As has been noted, its all about preventing prot warriors from one shotting clothies in pvp with shieldslams (35K slam crits ftw). Prot pallies are affected by this just so that the warriors don't scream.

Second, with that in mind, I'm kinda surprised the cap is as low as 2.4K in additional value. I assumed it was gonna be 2.4K total. Still, changes like this make it pretty clear that when the devs were afraid block would scale too well, they were thinking of warriors, and this is what they were thinking about.

My guild (at the moment) is using 4 tanks, one of each kind, and our gear is at least within spitting distance of each other. After cranking everuyone's numbers in RAWR, I've finally been convinced that the dam reduction part of AD really is OP. I didn't want it to be true, but it is. Even druids are looking up at us for virtually any situation.

After a few rounds of Patch tests this'll become clear, and AD will be nerfed. The question is what they do to it. I love the concept, but it might even at 5/10/15 reduction it might be too much because our overall damage taken was already fine, and even nerfed AD makes us a powerhouse (IMO 15 would leave us still kinda in druid territory and well ahead of wars and dks), when our issue all along has been cooldowns... perhaps Blizz intends druids and pallies to be the eh, weaker cd tanks, but after the fun balancing dks, its hard to imagine they'd go that way.

Addding block value to make use better add tanks does not take away out ability to use none block tanking gear if we do not wish to have it. Threat is not our weak point.

Any guild that takes tank for the class has not seen a good tanks of ever class.

Yeah, Ardent Defender is an odd ability and doesn't really solve the cool down problem at all. The passive 15% EH increase is way too good but the cool down portion (the GS heal) is too weak. They literally just tried to throw in something OP and something UP and figured it would cancel itself out or something. Oo

In any case, just nerfing the passive damage reduction won't really solve the CD problem. If they do that (which they most likely will) then expect some compensation for the GS bit.